


Their Gods Do Not Have Surgeons

by feverbeats



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, M/M, Multi, Power Dynamics, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:55:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25680184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: No one has seen him bleed or cry because to bleed or cry is to fail. But if you don't learn how to do those things with grace, nobody believes you can fight, either.
Relationships: Reno/Rufus Shinra, Rufus Shinra/Cloud Strife, Rufus Shinra/Tseng
Comments: 8
Kudos: 50





	Their Gods Do Not Have Surgeons

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a Mountain Goats song.
> 
> Additional warnings: brief physical abuse of teenager by parent, brief mention of watersports, unconfirmed one-sided incest. Just Rufus Shinra things!

**FAMILY**

When Rufus Shinra is three, he starts having seizures. It's impossible to hide. 

The seizures mostly subside when he's eleven, with time and with one of the medicines Hojo has cooked up. But Rufus never forgets what it feels like to lose control like that. He gets a pet that can help him in case they should happen again (and they do, sometimes). It has fangs and it sleeps on the foot of his bed.

When Rufus is fifteen, he spends 20,000 gil on a motorcycle that has more gears than he has years on the planet. His father instantly forbids him to ride it. Rufus Shinra, porcelain doll, cannot be allowed to bleed or cry.

Later, he'll understand. He won't agree, but he'll understand.

Rufus learns to make his father's orders work for him. The iron fist in a velvet glove. He looks fragile because he has no choice. No one has seen him bleed or cry because to bleed or cry is to fail. But if you don't learn how to do those things with grace, nobody believes you can fight, either.

So Rufus seeks out opportunities. A month after he gets it, he drives the motorcycle through the plate glass in the lobby. He bleeds all over his white t-shirt and laughs until he cries. He's hurried away by his father's Turks before anyone can see.

His father is deeply uninterested in Rufus and his life, except when Rufus does something he's not supposed to. The lesson Rufus learns from that is the obvious one. He makes himself as much trouble as possible, and the attention he gets is worse and worse. He kisses a boy (there's a story there) and gets slapped across the face. He steals one of Scarlet's weapons and busts up a piece of Sector 6 and gets screamed at for a week.

There are few bright spots, growing up in the Shinra building. Most days, the only one he can think of is Scarlet. She's inexplicably nice to him, giving him advice, mopping him up after he's father's destroyed him again. He doesn't want to think about why that might be. Everyone talks about the rumors about his parentage, even when he's within earshot. It must just not matter that much to them.

**SEPHIROTH**

Rufus hates Sephiroth more than he hates anyone, including his father. Or maybe it's that his hatred for Sephiorth and his hatred for his father are inextricable things. Is it true that without Sephiroth, Rufus's father would love him, instead? Of course not, but the fact remains that he treats Sephiroth more like a son than Rufus. Nothing Sephiroth could possibly be suffering is worth that trade-off. (Rufus is wrong. He isn't often wrong, and he doesn't learn this for a very long time.)

The two of them are close in age, and they're often the only people in the building who are. Before Reno joins the Turks, they certainly are. But because Rufus hates Sephiroth, they rarely speak.

The adults only make it worse. Rufus's father is constantly summoning Sephiroth for dinners with him and leaving Rufus to stew, alone. Rufus can see why, even as a teenager--Sephiroth is a valuable asset and has to be kept happy--but it doesn't make him feel better.

Hojo is always hovering behind Sephiroth, drawing his blood to make sure he's still amazing, hustling him away from Rufus's father, giving him advice. Rufus does find it somewhat gratifying that Sephiroth seems to hate Hojo as much as Rufus hates his father.

If Rufus and Sephiroth had been able to stand each other enough to have a conversation, both of them might have been happier.

**AVALANCHE**

One spring when Rufus is finally healing enough to use the bike again, he takes it from where it's chained up in the garage and goes cruising around Sector 5. It's spring. There are still a few flowering trees in the city in those days, and the air is heavy with rain, waiting. Rufus wants so badly, for once, to be a person. People can do things besides run companies. They can feel things.

He's about to do something that is, depending your perspective, monumentaly stupid or shockingly clever. He's going to find out how to contact AVALANCHE.

When Rufus was little, there was a tree he could see from his window, if he looked down. He used to like the juxtaposition of the blossoms in spring with the wet pavement and shining steel. That tree is gone now, along with almost everything else green. When Rufus starts funneling money into AVALANCHE, that's not his motivation, but it hangs in the back of his mind. AVALANCHE is going to save the world.

AVALANCHE is going to save Rufus. They're going to speed up his ten-year plan significantly.

**RENO**

The first time Rufus meets Reno, they physically run into each other. It's not an especially interesting or cute story, except that it's indicative of everything about their relationship. And it's notable because Reno's head gives Rufus a bloody nose, which everyone immediately has to hide.

Reno spends years after that breaking through Rufus's boundaries. He's messy, sloppy, loud, rude--and also shockingly smart and focused. He wouldn't survive as a Turk if he wasn't good at his job.

He's Rufus's first kiss--there aren't a lot of other options. Reno flirts shamelessly, and Rufus isn't sure if he means it, but nothing will upset his father more. So he wants until his father is looking and darts in for a kiss. They're in the hallway on the 44th floor, with a handful of executives around, and everyone freezes.

Reno doesn't freeze. He makes a little surprised noise that turns into a whimper and he kisses back, tongue and teeth. Rufus didn't know what he expected, but it catches on his consciousness and he loses track of the plan.

He comes back to himself when his father drags them apart, slapping Rufus across the face. His father has only hit him a handful of times, and never like that. It takes Rufus's breath away.

After that, Reno is reassigned to duties outside the building, and it takes Rufus almost four months to make sure he's able to edge his way back. It's not the last time they kiss, but Rufus is careful not to let it go further than that. He can't lose self-control. Reno doesn't seem to mind either way.

Rufus doesn't know if Reno understands him, but he thinks they're the same, in some ways that matter. Neither of them will ever be Sephiroth. There's nothing magical about the Turks, or about Rufus. Rufus is going to build himself up in the works of men, with his Turks, his team. Then the world is going to be better.

**CLOUD**

There are always questions in Rufus's mind about family. His father is, unfortunately, an immutable fact. Lazard is a question mark Rufus has written off as not being especially interesting to answer. His mother is something he refuses to solve. And now there is this boy. Cloud, with his soft blonde hair, born in Nibelheim when the Shinra mansion there was still inhabited. Rufus has all the pieces for an answer, but it's not one he likes, so he sets aside the solution as irrelevant.

He's poured so much time and money into AVALANCHE. He feels as if he's owed something in return. When he watches the video feeds of Cloud, he slows them down, stops them so he can watch Cloud's arms flex, see the way his hands move. He's a SOLDIER, grubby, rough. It sends sparks through Rufus's belly

Rufus isn't a person who gets off on power. He likes power, power is built into his fabric, but it's not sexual. It's something completely separate.

But there's something intoxicating about giving power away with both hands.

He imagines all the things Cloud might do if he broke in here, to his office. He could drag Rufus to the ground by his hair. He could force Rufus to suck him off, choking Rufus with his cock. He could knot his fist in Rufus's hair and piss in his face--

Rufus comes with a small, stunned sound.

When he finally does meet Cloud, up on the roof, he's a consummate professional.

**TSENG**

There are flaws in Rufus's plan. He has to be willing to make almost anyone dispensable, and he keeps getting...entangled.

This particular set of Turks is a carefully constructed puzzle. Tseng and Elena, Elena and Rude, Rude and Reno, Reno and Tseng. Rufus doesn't see a place for himself in all of that, although in his wildest dreams he can imagine that there might be.

And now all things are possible. Rufus is president. The board may not like him or take him seriously, but he's here, he's made it.

The rain dashes itself against the window in gouts. Rufus always feels like he should be immune to the weather this high up. Possibly that's a metaphor, but he leaves it unexamined.

Tseng is standing, statue-like, in the doorway.

Tseng is significantly older than Rufus, but he works for him, but he's killed more people, but he's good at taking orders, but he's good at giving them--the layers of power slough off, leaving a spiral even Rufus can't follow.

Tseng is a perfect fit for Rufus, because he's unattainable. He's also a professional, who will never respond to any of Rufus's needling, vicious come-ons. He's diamond-hard and perfect to want, because if he wants Rufus back, Rufus will never know it.

Rufus turns all the lights off in his office, except the tiny lamp on his desk. That, the glow from the laptop, and the shine of his materia cast strange shadows on the walls, and on his face. Tseng is still silent. They could be sitting here a thousand years and he would still be silent.

Rufus can't fit the word "love" in his mouth, but if it exists for him, it's something close to this. He's holding power in his hand--more than he knows what to do with, if such a thing is possible, and he has his Turks with him.

**DIAMOND WEAPON**

Rufus is doing well. He thinks he's doing well. He has plans that stretch all the way into the future, plans that gather threads from all the way in the past. Rufus has plans.

In the moment, he's brave.

**ADVENT**

Rufus is broken Rufus is alive. He should count himself lucky.

When they first find him in the ruins of the Shinra building, in the literal destruction of his empire, he's bleeding, but he's not crying. He's alive, but he can't walk. Rude digs him out with his bare hands, patient and careful, while Reno vibrates with emotion beside him.

Rufus scans Reno's face. "Payback," he says. He doesn't like how his voice sounds.

Reno makes a little hiccuping sound that might be a laugh. "What, when Cloud took me apart? I didn't look _this_ bad, boss."

 _Boss_. The word trickles down through Rufuf's mind, even as his consciousness flickers in and out. Reno is so absolutely charming and bizarre. Rufus wants to live just to find out more.

A year in, he teaches himself to walk again. It's agonizing and slow, and more so because he won't ask for help. He won't let them know. If he can walk and he's the only one who knows it, he'll be underestimated.

Iron fist. Velvet glove. It comes so easily now.

He sits in the ruin of his plans and tries to assemble new ones. That's agonizing as well. The Turks are there, but he can't let them in. Not right now.

What he does most of all, though, is wait for Cloud. Cloud will fix it. Cloud will find a way. Rufus will make sure of it.


End file.
